Stay Away from Ghosts – Why You Should Write Your Own Blog

On a fairly regular basis I get offers from law firms seeking to have me ghost-write their blog articles for them. I get it why attorneys want to outsource blogging. Law practice can be a real grind. And to adequately represent your client’s interest it simply takes time – a lot of time. This leaves little time for anything else. In fact, this is why many lawyers shy away from content marketing is because of the fear of the time commitment involved.

If you decide to start a blog you need to commit to writing it yourself. This is something that shouldn’t be outsourced. Here are my main two reasons why:

#1 – Your Blog Will Humanize Your Law Firm

People hire lawyers, not law firms. When someone comes into your office and decides to hire you as their attorney it is because they have made some type of connection with you as a person and feel comfortable in trusting you to do the job.

Blogging provides you a platform to show what kind of person you are before clients ever even step foot into your law firm. Your articles should not only show your knowledge of the law but should shed some light on your personality. People who visit your website or read your blog should leave feeling like that have some insight as to who you really are.

If you outsource your blogging you will end up with a bunch of articles that will contain all of the relevant terms for the search engines, and they may even help propel you to the top of the rankings in Google, but once you get clients to your website you will struggle to get people to take action and make the call to your office. On numerous occasions I have people come into my office and tell me they chose me as their lawyer because of the tone of my website.

Tone seems a strange reason to hire a lawyer, but people want to feel comfortable with who you are as a person before they pay you a bunch of money to be their lawyer. There are a lot of lawyers out there that practice in your area of law and do it just as well or better than you do. If you want to stand out from the crowd, show people who you are as a person in your blog posts. Most lawyers don’t do this and it will immediately separate you from the pack.

#2- Become the Authority in Your Area of Law

The second reason you should write your own blog articles is blogging provides you the opportunity to become the authority in your area of law. If you are outsourcing your blogging you may get articles that are legally correct (or may not), but if you are writing your own stuff you will be able to share your legal knowledge and the nuances of the law that you have acquired from years of law practice.

Further, blogging on a consistent basis requires that you come up with new topics – and usually requires that you do some of your own research. This regular research keeps you on top of the most current trends in your area of the law and truly helps you to become the go to authority in your area of law. This is true even though there are undoubtedly attorneys that are more experienced than you may be. You can be the authority – you just have to let people know about it.

It is tempting to hire a person or company to ghost-write your blog, pay them the money, flip the switch, and hope the clients pour in. However, if you are serious about using a blog to market your practice, write it yourself. The legal world doesn’t need another generic boring blog. It needs to hear from you.

DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

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